The strike is scheduled for the morning and afternoon periods on the first day, affecting the hospitals of Faro, Portimão and Lagos, Basic Emergency Services (Albufeira, Loulé and Vila Real de Santo António), the Southern Center for Medicine and Rehabilitation, and the Convalescence Unit of Loulé. On the second day, it will affect primary health care, as stated by the SEP in a press release.
“The delays in solutions and the worsening of working conditions continue to be responsible for the increase in resignation requests and absenteeism, particularly due to the deterioration of nurses’ physical and mental conditions,” lamented the union, considering that there are old problems “to be resolved” and “new ones with no solution in sight.”
Among the issues that the SEP demands to be resolved by the Local Health Unit of the Algarve are the “hours owed,” with the union requesting “payment based on the calculation of twice the hourly rate of overtime for the 35-hour regime, that is, 200%,” as well as the need to proceed with “competitions for specialist nurses and nurse managers” to also address the departure of professionals who have retired.
The schedule regulation is also among the union’s demands, which classifies as “unacceptable the imposition of 12-hour shifts, which are illegal, particularly in emergency services and basic emergency services,” arguing that it is necessary to respect professionals’ rest periods, when “1,000 nurses are missing” in the Algarve ULS, they criticized.
Career progressions and payment of retroactive wages, debt to nurses who performed overtime work during the Covid-19 pandemic, or the “lack of materials and drugs, particularly vaccines, in primary health care,” are other matters that the SEP wants to see resolved by the Algarve ULS administration.
According to the union, it is also necessary to make “incentive payments in model B family health units” and “admit more nurses” to model B family health units.
“How many more nurses will have to leave for the ULS to pay retroactive wages, pay debts, not use and abuse overtime, allowing nurses to organize their personal and professional lives, and value and respect nurses,” questioned the SEP.
The lack of response to the professionals’ demands, the deterioration of working conditions, and the insufficient number of nurses are making it increasingly difficult for nursing professionals to work in the Algarve, the union concludes.
